“What Would Your Mothers Think?”

Cat Deeley was gushing earlier this week about how lovely Holly Willoughby was in welcoming her to the This Morning job. Holly supposedly passed on the baton with a beautiful bunch of flowers and a handwritten card – a “classy move”.

It’s just a shame Holly wasn’t so classy in her own time at This Morning. She was infamous among crew members for not really bothering to get to know their names, and took the dubious honour of being the only presenter not to get Christmas presents for her co-workers.

Worst of all, in the crew’s eyes, she always took her on-screen birthday cake (paid for by the production) home at the end of her shift, without offering to share it.

A Popbitch reader found themself seated on a busy train recently opposite Michael Gove, and had a mixed review of his public transport etiquette.

While he graciously waved the reader in to share his group of four seats and stayed mercifully quiet throughout the journey, his manspreading was so broad (and so frequent) that he accidentally kept kicking them under the table. Then left behind his rubbish when he disembarked.

FYI: In news that will come as a blow to his old employers at NewsUK, he spent the whole time reading The Telegraph.

Which Brit actress had a real hot streak with A-list men at the turn of the century (George Clooney, Ewan McGregor) – only for it to come to a screeching halt with Liam Gallagher? Memories of his questionable penile hygiene still haunt her.

Last week’s Big Question about the dodgy podcast producer caused our inbox to light up like crazy. It seems the podcast industry is long overdue a huge bitchfest – with audio insiders dying to draw attention to some of the other wrong’uns in their midst.

The next story that seems to be fit to break? There’s a self-promoting podcast boss who is currently under investigation by his own company for fraudulently inflating figures to get more investment. And that investigation might even be about to blow up into the public domain.

Pod-people. Tell us your stories hello@popbitch.com

Elle Macpherson’s been causing controversy in the press this week for saying she rejected conventional chemotherapy in order to treat her cancer more ‘holistically’ – a feat which will no doubt do wonders for the fortunes of the wellness company she founded: WelleCo.

Elle has always been very particular about what she puts in her body. Old dinner companions say that whenever they took her out to dinner, she would always forgo any of the posh nosh on the menu and just order a plate of plain broccoli (pieces of which she would chew for minutes at a time).

She’s also apparently a big fan of boiled eggs. But what she intimated she likes to do with those is best kept to the confines of her own bedroom. (And your imagination).

While not quite in Cilla Black’s league, Elle Macpherson is another name that always crops up whenever cabin crew reel off their list of weirdest passengers.

Like Cilla, Elle really likes to sit in seat 1A. On this particular occasion she’d boarded and was getting settled in the front row when she was informed by cabin crew she’d have to relocate to row five. Staff had just been told a VVIP was about to get on the plane.

Elle was furious but agreed to move. And as the mystery bigwig’s security detail started to board, the whole of business class fell quiet.

Except for one loud Australian accent, angrily asking the flight attendant: “Who the fuck is Kofi Annan anyway?”

NG writes:
“In 1998, during Oasis’s fateful trip to Brisbane – the one where Liam got arrested for headbutting that young tourist who tried to get a photo – I found myself at the bar of the hotel where the band was staying. It was a relatively posh place for Brisbane in the 1990s.

“I arrived as they were finishing up an hours-long drink session and was just in time to watch Bonehead push a 70-something year old woman up against the wall screaming: “What did you say about my mother, I’ll fucking kill you, you don’t talk about my mother” etc. He had to be dragged off by the band’s security.

“Her crime? Oblivious to who they were, this elderly Queensland dame who’d been having afternoon tea with her friends had politely but firmly asked them to tone down their loud swearing, finishing off with that universal admonishment: ‘What would your mothers think!'”

It wasn’t all champagne and smashing up hotel rooms for Liam Gallagher in the wake of his divorce to Nicole Appleton. In fact when the news broke he hid out in the Carpenter’s Arms – a quiet pub in the middle of Bethnal Green.

Liam’s accountant rang ahead to assure discretion before arriving with him and girlfriend Debbie in tow. The three of them stayed from lunchtime till closing, drinking three bottles of Havana Club rum between them.

That final bottle was purchased not from the bar but from the Big Tesco down the road. So it can’t have been good news the accountant was delivering.

What’s Matt Hancock been up to since giving up his cushy government job? He’s been pretty active on LinkedIn of late, touting himself as a “Former UK Cabinet Minister”.

Most recently, he’s been working with a Surrey-based tech company, promising to save any poor soul stupid enough to connect with him 15% on their energy bills.

We know times are tough, but are they tough enough to save a bit of money if it means having to speak to Matt Hancock?

A new conspiracy is gaining traction in weirder corners of the web alleging that Grimes’ 2015 album, Art Angels, is causing women to spontaneously shave their heads.

A post on Reddit’s conspiracy forum has collated a bunch of comments from Grimes fans – all reporting the same thing. Many are suggesting the culprit is foul play, satanism, etc. But maybe there’s another answer.

Grimes supposedly experimented with drugs and sleep deprivation to record her music, in order to achieve a “higher level of consciousness”. It’s not entirely clear it worked though, because Grimes has since called Art Angels a “piece of crap” and a “stain on [her] life”.

Could it be that a side-effect of this ritual experimentation, resentment and negative feeling is seeping out subliminally – causing women to chop off their locks?

The Fall and Rise of Nicolas Cage: A Statistical Analysis
[Read on Stat Significant]

Eddie The Eagle is selling off an IKEA chair on Facebook
[A snip at £25]

Fun Icelandic tradition: chucking baby puffins off a cliff
[Watch on YouTube]

Burning Man’s richest piss off in private jets while everyone else sits around in their own poo
[Poor things]

Steve Buscemi broke up a fight outside a pub in Ireland
[Independent.ie]

Once again, nobody wants Donald Trump using their songs in his campaign
[Read on Vulture]

Swear at the webcam to prove you’re human – because AI bots struggle to make the wanker gesture
[Sick of Captchas?]

Still Bored?
The Rocky Horror Show begins its London run TOMORROW – don’t forget to redeem your exclusive ticket offer.
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